METACRAN mirrors CRAN packages at GitHub. Each CRAN package lives in its own github repository, .g. package Rcpp is at https://github.com/cran/Rcpp. All versions of all packages are included, and each version is a separate git commit, tagged with the version number. We tried to keep the original dates and authors/maintainers as well.

The main goal of CRAN @ GitHub is the easy access to the source code or CRAN packages. In particular, you can

• See differences between package versions, e.g. what changed between 1.2.0 and 1.2.1 in crayon.
• Fork packages, and create patched versions of them, for your own purposes.

CRAN versions

https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version/{package}

Shows the version number of the package on CRAN, or “not published” if the package is not published on CRAN.

CRAN release dates

https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version-ago/{package}
https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version-last-release/{package}
https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/ago/{package}
https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/last-release/{package}

Variations on CRAN versions and release dates.

CRAN downloads

https://cranlogs.r-pkg.org/badges/{summary}/{package}

Shows number of downloads for a given package, see https://github.com/metacran/cranlogs.app for details.

Overview

Several METACRAN services offer a public API. The API is over HTTP, and data is sent and received as JSON.

Package database

Database of all CRAN R packages. It is a CouchDB database, hosted at https://crandb.r-pkg.org/. Its API is discussed at the project page: https://github.com/metacran/crandb.

Package search

Search service that indexes package metadata. It is provided by an Elasticsearch server, that exposes its search API. It is hosted at http://seer.r-pkg.org:9200/_search, and its API is the standard Elasticsearch API.

Package downloads

Download summaries from the RStudio CRAN mirror, taken from http://cran-logs.rstudio.com/. It is hosted http://cranlogs.r-pkg.org and its API is discussed at the project page: https://github.com/metacran/cranlogs.app.

R versions

Small API that reports current and old R versions. It is hosted at https://rversions.r-pkg.org and it API is documented at the project page: https://github.com/metacran/rversions.app.

R-builder is a script that eases building R packages from GitHub with various CI services. See its project page for details: https://github.com/metacran/r-builder.